


Age Before Beauty

by BoopPhysics



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:26:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28657191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoopPhysics/pseuds/BoopPhysics
Summary: The Warrior of Light, in the midst of a journey towards Garlemald, is snowed in in Idyllshire with a few of her companions.
Kudos: 14





	Age Before Beauty

The snow oughtn’t keep her so restless, she was used to snow. It ought to remind her of home, though she was certain home now was no more than years of amalgamated fantasies and distorted memories blending with her travels across thousands of leagues. She remembers the snowy cliffs and huddled woods, and how night was lit by countless stars that twinkled as gems across velvet dark, draping her adolescence in their gentle glow. She remembers them, but doubted they remembered her.

The fading of memories was mutual, she decided. As the cliffs and woods have forgotten her, so has she forgotten the snow; forgotten its violence and power, whipping and whirling as the tempest given form. It felt as though not even the slicing winds of Shiva could match what brewed out her window. Forgotten, unlike the malcontent festering in her heart. 

“They say it should lift in two day’s time, and we can forge on anew. We will still make it in time,” Alphinaud said, appearing beside her. He found a seat across from Memme near the window, offering her a steaming cup. It smelled like tea.

“Tis not tardiness which weighs on my mind, moreso the overreliance on the hospitality of our hosts that gives me my unrest,” Memme explained, gracefully accepting the beverage.

Idyllshire was not exactly a place of excess. It had been, once, before it was ever named Idyllshire, before the Garleans reignited their thoughts of Eorzean conquest anew and the fretful Sharlayans withdrew into their city-state and locked their proverbial gates, letting what was once a flourishing nexus of scholarship and travel to crumble and rust. Now there were more ruins than homes, though enough had been reclaimed to let Idyllshire boast itself as a genuine settlement. They were staying in one such reclaimed home, a building that Memme recognized to have once been a cafe before the exodus. She’d surprised the homely Hyur couple that dwelled here by showing them a forgotten tunnel into a storage cavern within their own abode. The room itself was long ruined, with the roof caving from years of disuse and calamities, yet the couple were thankful for its discovery all the same. The fewer secrets there were for their adopted dwelling, the better it would be for whomever would take their place in the future they’d told Memme.

“I shan’t think the Lorimers be too opposed to our extended stay; we will reimburse them for their niceties and more before we go on our way,” Alphinaud said.

“There are things gil can not buy, you know,” Memme said. “Privacy and time foremost among them.”

“And there are things that can not be gained through staring out a window, contentment foremost among them,” Alphinaud countered. "Are you alright, Memme? You have been in a mood since dinner. Was it something with the food?"

“Nay, tis not,” Memme replied with no further elucidation. Alphinaud’s words rang true, though tweren’t the weather nor cabin fever that granted the Warrior of Light her annoyance. There was something else, akin to a perpetual itch, as though someone had tied fishing line to a nerve and pulled it taut, strumming it occasionally and in no particular sequence at odd intervals through the day. Irrational, she knew, yet mortal as she was, irrationality was to be expected at times. 

Alphinaud was unsatisfied with her answer, but hid it behind a sip of tea. Memme mimicked him, then resumed her brooding beside the window. The snow hadn’t abated since it began afore the sun set. Drifts now grew outside; waves of white wet that crested the cobbled streets as waves on the shore. It would impede their journey forward even if they had the right tools to journey it.

“Ah, there you are.” A new voice interrupted her irritable musings, and Memme considered retiring to her room to nurse her discontent in peace. However, that would be improper, so she shifted her body instead to give room to Alisae as she joined them with her own mug of mystery drink. “What are you two doing here of all places?” Alisaie asked.

“Memme is brooding, and I am accompanying her,” Alphinaud explained.

“I am not brooding,” Memme protested.

“Oh? And has she illuminated her reasons for her bad mood? I hope it isn’t Master Matoya’s departing words, she means little harm with them,” Alisae said, ignoring her.

“I am not brooding,” Memme protested again.

“No, I have yet to find out,” Alphinaud said. The twins seemed bent on denying her her explanations, and so Memme folded her arms angrily and turned away from them to settle her eyes on the snow again. Alphinaud continued despite her irritation. “Though I hope if I sit here long enough that will change.”

It would not; Memme would ensure it as she did not know the source of her irritation herself. She let them sit near her in silence, with only the whistle of the wind and the crackle of the fire lending their tongues to break the passivity. She knew it irritated them both; Alphinaud preferred conversation, and Alisaie preferred action, neither of which could hope to occur when all they could do was sit. She hoped making them tolerate the lack of either would drive them away. It almost worked, twere it not for a third soul to emerge and disrupt her plans.

“I pray I am not interrupting,” Urianger said as he appeared in the doorway bearing a tray filled with an array of sliced fruits and more tea. “Nay,” the twins responded while Memme said nothing. The Elezen scholar took the invitation as it was presented and set the tray down on a small table betwixt both couches then settled into the last remaining seat beside Alphinaud. He poured himself a helping of tea then took a draught, thoughtful and long enough for Memme to know that he had spotted her troubles as well.

“Tis no pressing matter,” she said before their ruminations could begin anew. “Only a passing annoyance at the thought that we could be late. The snow is piling, and we are ill prepared for it.”

“Fortuitous then, that I hath produced woolen garments in preparation from a local weaver,” Urianger replied.

“Coats would do little against those drifts, lest you wish for us to swim through the snow,” Memme said.

“Thine worry is unneeded. The goblins’ automatons and remaining magicked golems provideth more than sufficient means to clear our path,” Urianger said. “There art other things upon your mind, milady.”

Memme sighed. She hated how well they’d all gotten at reading her, and more importantly herself at how she has forgotten to mask her moods. “We will be skirting by Sharlayan as we continue into Garlemald,” she explained. “If we are to be spotted—or worse, routed—we can not be certain that the empire does not see them as an enemy or use our foray as an excuse to attack.”

“They would do no such thing,” Alphinaud said sharply.

“They lack treatise with the empire, and it is not as though they have not tried the Forum’s defences before,” Memme pointed out. “The threat is very real, despite Sharlayan’s devotion to neutrality in Eorzea’s sovereignty.”

“You wish for them to formally declare a stake?” Alisae asked.

Memme shook her head. “Nay, the opposite,” she said. “I wish to respect their vow, as such, I feel our journey should be diverted to a more...conspicuous path.”

“And yet such a divergence to our path would bring us delay,” Urianger said, connecting the dots she’d laid out. “Leaving Thancred and our spies alone upon the Empire’s lands yet longer.” He paused for a moment, frowning. “Surely thou art not worried for his abilities?” he asked.

“Abilities, no,” Memme said. “Far be it for me to doubt his safe return to us, nay, I worry his mere presence will cause incident if he is to be spotted and recognized, by either Sharlayan or Garlean eyes.”

“I daresay Thancred would not be so foolish, you shouldn’t worry so,” Alphinaud said.

Of course she  _ shouldn’t _ worry so. Her friends have proven, again and again, that they were more than sufficient at their respective crafts. Yet the fear of the unknown and the unaccounted for still nagged at Memme’s heart, and there seemed ill she could do to soothe it.

“Well, that’s that, then. Let’s move this discussion to something less gloomy,” Alisaie said. She pointed a finger at Memme. “How did you know about that tunnel underneath the house? Did you find it when you first came here during the Dragonsong War?” she asked.

“Hmm? Nay,” Memme said. “I knew about it because I used to come here all the time for their muffins.”

Alisaie paused, her cup halfway to her lips. “I beg your pardon?” she asked.

“The Lorimers’ home was once a bakery. I recognized it from its doorway,” Memme said.

“From it’s doorway? You’ve been here before?” This time it was Alphinaud to sound incredulous.

“Of course I have,” Memme replied quizzically. “I dallied here in Dravania for several summers before the exodus occurred and I journeyed deeper into Eorzea.”

“But...that was almost thirty years ago,” Alisaie said. 

Memme pondered that for a moment. Gods, has it been so long? The years seemed so close yet distant at once. “Perhaps?” she said.

Alphinaud shook his head in disbelief. “Perhaps? You don’t remember how many years it’s been since the exodus, yet you remember a storefront?” he asked.

“Their muffins were very good. They made them with honeyed mead,” Memme said, defending herself. Urianger hid a small laugh behind a sip of tea.

“Wait,” Alisaie interrupted. “Does that mean you were in Dravania as a child?”

“Gods no. I did not leave the mountains until I was well into my majority. Perhaps twenty or so summers,” Memme said. “Then however many more until I found my way to Dravania.”

“Then...that means...you’re...” Alisaie found herself at a loss for words as she attempted to divine history with mathematics in her mind. 

“Close to ninety years old,” Alphinaud muttered while rubbing his chin, beating his sister to the punch.

Now it was Memme’s turn to turn her mental gears. Close to a century? She shook her head. “Impossible,” she said. “Ninety sounds far too old.”

“Nay, they have the right of it. If truth be what thine requireth, I possess it,” Urianger piped up.

“I am not—” Memme began.

“Remembereth thee of the beginnings of the Garlean empire?” Urianger asked.

“But of course,” Memme said. “I was there as they ignited their engines of conquest, with a disguised Emet-Selch at its helm.”

“An event which precedeth mine own birth by thirty years,” Urianger said.

The revelation put Memme on the back foot as she tried to remember Urianger’s age. “That isn’t—” she tried again.

“What of the conquest of Doma, or the actions of the mad King Theodoric?” Urianger continued. “Read you of these events from books or didst thou happen to witness these events in another fashion?”

Memme tapped a finger against her chin as she sought to remember the events. “Nay, I...aided in a few skirmishes along the Othard border, though in no more capacity than a scout or messenger. The fights were often brutal and short, and Doma could scarcely hold an ilm of ground against the lightning war that Garlemald waged,” she said. “And was at the palace itself as the Fists of Rhalgr decided to shroud themselves from Ala Mhigo when Theodoric demanded to expunge them all. Many of those, regardless if they were royal blood or lowly peasant could be thrown into a gaol if they voiced their dissent.”

“Yes,” Urianger said. “This I am acquainted with for thou penned one of the first accounts of these purges.”

“Me? I could hardly have been one of the firsts. I did not submit my journals until well after I came to Limsa Lominsa, not to mention I published them under another name,” Memme said.

“Yet thine name occurs often beside other storied historians and scholars, even within the books of the Studium,” Urianger replied.

“The Studium has my journals?” Memme asked, mind racing to see if she’d put down more than she’d meant to when writing them.

“Aye, I’ve read them,” Urianger said.

“You’ve read my journals?!”

Alisaie began to laugh. “You know, this does explain why you kind of talk like him,” she said. 

“Talk like whom?” Memme asked. 

Alisaie pointed a finger at Urianger.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Memme bristled.

“That you are as old as you claim, and more,” Alphinaud explained. “Far more, to be honest. That is hardly a thing to be ashamed of.”

“I have not passed ninety summers!” Memme cried, feeling flustered despite herself. “That makes me sound so...old.”

For many seconds there was only the howl of the wind and the crackle of the fire as everyone in attendance digested her words. The three of them all itched to state the obvious. None of them were brave enough to. This time it was Memme’s turn to speak up.

“What?” she asked. “Why are you all quiet all of a sudden?”

Alphinaud, ever the precocious, was the first to speak. “Memme,” he said, stifling the words in his fist. “You  _ are _ old.” 

The sound of the slap that followed startled even the Lorimers in the opposite end of the house.


End file.
